Backfire
by thebinanas
Summary: Elena Narayan hadn't expected to wake up after being fatally wounded in a car crash. She certainly hadn't expected to wake up in a fictional sci-fi universe where other people apparently know her, or to have a backseat driver occasionally squat in her head. Or: an attempt at realistically examining and deconstructing various self-insert tropes found in this fandom and out of it.


**A/N:** I've had this idea bouncing around my head for the better part of a year, and I just needed to get it out of my system. Basically, this story is an attempt to deconstruct a lot of the self-insert tropes I've noticed in this fandom and out of it. If you like to write self-inserts, please don't take offence: this isn't intended to be a jab at anyone. Please consider it to be more of an examination of the _concept_ of self-inserts than any one fic.

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(NEW EMAIL RECEIVED.)

(OPENING…)

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 **From: [redacted]**

 **To: [encrypted]**

 **Subject: A Common Interest**

You're welcome.

(attached file(s): carefulwhatyouaskfor…, areyouhappynow…)

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(FILE SELECTED: areyouhappynow…)

(FILE OPENING…)

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(FILE OPENED) __

 _Diary entry – 1:_

Date: **(redacted)**

Time: **(redacted)**

[Omni-tool use]

 _[AUDIO RECORDING SELECTED]_

 **(transcription begins)**

 **(redacted):** _Okay. Okay. Well. Haha._ Ahaha.

 _So. I was pressured into getting this. I personally thought – still do, actually, now that I think about it – that getting told to use an electronic diary was –_ is _– quite possibly the stupidest recommendation I have_ _ever received. I'd much prefer an actual notebook. I mean, do you know how easily electronic files can get_ hacked?

 _Funnily enough, Doctor_ **(redacted)** _wrote down "extreme paranoia" after I said that. But I am telling you right now I am not –_

 **(silence; [redacted] does not continue for four minutes and thirty-six seconds. Muffled voices in the background.)**

 _I am not "paranoid."I'm not paranoid without reason, at least. Could you blame me if I were? I'm not - Well, I might be… I'm not, well… maybe I'm a little… crazy. But again, can you blame me?_

… _I suppose I should take this seriously, since_ **(redacted)** _will probably stop by to check on me at some point. To make sure I'm doing this properly, I mean._

 **(silence – continues for forty-two seconds)**

Ugh. _I can't believe I'm actually talking at my omni-tool like an idiot._

 **(silence - continues for three minutes and twenty-nine seconds)**

 _I guess… since I'm taking this seriously… that my issues (my serious ones, anyway) all started when my parents died and I was rescued by…_ someone.

(…)

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 **10:30PM ([UTC – 08:00] Pacific Time [US & Canada])  
February 3rd, 2017  
Vancouver, British Columbia  
Planet Earth, Sol System  
Local Cluster**

Her parents had taken her to swim at the beach, once, when she was six. The occasion had been memorable, not because of its rarity - she _lived_ close to a beach, after all - but instead for its circumstance. Her parents had been in a promising _on_ phase in their relationship. After living separately for several months, it had been the first time she'd seen them together, with no pressure of choosing who to live with, in what had felt like _ages._

She'd taken advantage of their proximity in every way she could have: by crouching beneath the sun and building sandcastles with them; messily eating ice cream – with _both_ of them! - before the heat melted it; dragging them _both_ off to swim with her in the ocean, where she'd dove underwater and just listened, in that dull, detached way water permitted, to the happenings above surface. To the sounds of her father's bad jokes and her mother's laughter…

Presently, Elena felt as though she were underwater again, far away from the realities of the surface, hearing distilled by the ocean. But there was no vast body of water to ensconce her this time: only a casket of gnarled metal, in which her mind faded to wisps, and where there existed no noises she could take comfort in.

For a while, she'd only been able to hear ringing. The screech had long since drowned out the roar of wind and falling hail that pervaded the night. Yet, Elena thought she could still hear a wet, choked cough, one that periodically managed to cut through and focus her hazy thoughts. She tried once more to speak, to move, to go to the source of it, but her body refused to obey her. Run through by a metal beam and pinned to the cold floor like a live butterfly stabbed to a table, she could not do anything but listen, and twitch, and wait in the freezing winter cold that had steadily numbed her limbs.

She'd tried to move towards it earlier, when things had first gone to hell. The metal beam had creaked, as though protesting the action _for_ her, and the agony of the movement collapsed her. That all-consuming, indescribable pain had long ago receded to sharp lances, as unparticular in their severity and choice of path as the mist the cold drew from the blood around her.

Altogether, she figured that loss of feeling was probably a bad sign.

The coughing continued until it was interrupted by an abrupt, desperate inhale of breath. And then it stopped. She strained her ears to listen, but moments passed and her father did not make anymore sounds. When the black spots dancing across her vision grew, and only the ringing resounded, she closed her eyes and tried to focus on evenly breathing instead. She drifted for a while, caught somewhere between thought and unconsciousness, before she managed to claw through it and reorient.

 _I need to stay awake_.

She had not looked at the extent of her injuries – she'd been too afraid to. She could feel how sticky her clothes were from blood, and how every one of her muscles felt as though they were trembling and pulled taut.

She did not need to look. Elena knew enough of her own body to understand that she was dying.

At least, Elena decided, with all the final authority the dying could only assert, there were far worse ways to go out. That old TV show _1000 Ways to Die_ stood testament to _that_ fact: she could at least go out knowing that she would not be posthumously granted a Darwin award. She could also take comfort from knowing that _she_ hadn't gotten everyone killed. If it were anyone's fault, it was her father's - and her mother's, the geniuses that they both were. Her father's fault for picking a fight with her mother as he sped down icy midwinter roads, ignoring Elena's warnings to slow down; her mother's for turning the fight physical. At that point her father had, in his fury, slipped and lost control, veered into the opposite lane… and driven straight into oncoming traffic.

It was that "oncoming traffic" that Elena could hear now, the sound cutting through the ringing cacophony in her ears. The driver of the cargo truck that hit them was moaning, in between despairing attempts to stay calm, as though he'd been the one run through: _"Oh, God! Oh, God!"_ Elena idly wondered what he was doing, right now; if he were waiting for an ambulance to arrive, or trying to help her parents. She could have sworn she'd heard him dial 911 and shout hysterically at the operator. Maybe she'd imagined it. Or maybe the ringing was just their sirens… and she'd been too out...

Elena was startled awake (when had she lost consciousness?), brought to by the sound of the driver retching. She forced her eyes to open - she managed to hold them that way for a moment, until exhaustion swept over her and she could not maintain the effort. The poor man. Maybe he spotted her father in what remained of the front seat, and whatever his physical state presently was. Maybe he'd seen her mother, who'd been thrown out of the car, wherever she'd landed – neither of them would have come out of the accident looking pretty. She knew for certain that he hadn't seen _her_ , in her box of twisted metal. She hoped he wouldn't be further traumatized when he realized that she'd been there the whole time, and that he had neither noticed nor helped her. It wouldn't have been fair. The mess hadn't been his fault, either…

Elena caught herself when she drifted off again. She had no energy to speak, move, or even open her eyes, but she thought, _I have to stay awake._

 _I have to stay awake._ She tried to force the thought across her mind like some grand proclamation, but it slipped away as soon as she touched it, like she'd tried to grab smoke…

Elena thought, _I need to stay awake._

 _I need too…_

She did not stay awake.

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 _(…)_

 **(redacted):** _I wish I could play this whole thing off as smoothly as other people I've met have, but I can't. I mean, when I woke up after that whole there were all these people and I didn't even know where I w –_

 **(audio pause)**

 **(audio recording rewound to 23:04:43; audio deleted from 23:04:43 – 24:06:10)**

 **(silence – continues for three minutes and two seconds)**

 _Never mind. I'm going to stop. I don't care what_ **(redacted)** _says, I can't do this right no –_

 **(END OF ENTRY)**

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(CONTINUE TO NEXT FILE?)


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